Member Article

East Midlands to become traffic management leader

A major European green traffic management project will be launched at the National Space Centre in Leicester tomorrow.

The project, which draws knowledge from research teams across five European regions, will be led by the University of Leicester and Leicester City Council.

It will also involve De Montfort University, The University of Nottingham and Astrium Services, and hopes to establish the East Midlands as an internationally renowned leader in traffic management research.

£2.4m has been secured from the European Commission for the project, and local partners will be working in partnership with research clusters from the Molise region in Italy, the Midi-Pyrenees and Aquitaine regions in France, and the Mazovia region in Poland.

Professor Alan Wells, at the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre, is the scientific leader of the project.

He said: “With the EU funding we have secured, we can now coordinate different research activities in the same general areas of traffic and the environment that are being carried out by partners from across Europe. These sort of outcomes have never been brought together in this way before.

The project is called THE ISSUE (Transport Health Environment - Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies), and will facilitate three years of work between scientists, engineers and development agencies.

They will develop more effective methods of easing road congestion and improving the urban environment, ultimately influencing future policy.

Cllr Rory Palmer, deputy city mayor and cabinet lead on transport and climate change will address 70 delegates from the partner regions at the launch.

He said: “THE ISSUE Project is an excellent example of our commitment to working closely with Leicester’s two universities, and other partners, to the benefit of all people in the city and, in this case, much further afield.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .